Stooges

A long, grating, piercing hiss at the end. The gasping, almost choked rattle of a "non-singer" singer. Flat EEG line. The record is over, and the Prophet of Nothingness leaves the recording studio to dissociate himself, once more, from a world, from a context that cannot understand him. Only to return, a minute later, to his one true friend: an unhealthy, uncontrolled, elusive madness. All of this seems to evoke the ending of "Fun House", one of the most shocking records in the history of rock. And it is precisely him, the Prophet of Nothingness, Prophet of a reality distorted by heavy use of drugs, hallucinogens (and who knows what else). That is, Iggy "the Iguana" Pop, the first true legitimate forerunner of a nihilistic rock exalting self-destruction, symbol of a musical and ideological anarchy absurdly ahead of its time, and for that reason terribly misunderstood back then.

We're in 1970, and the Stooges had formed little more than a year earlier. Behind them lies their debut album "The Stooges", which already brilliantly captures the mad state of anarchy and dazed schizophrenia of Iggy & Company. "Uncomfortable" tracks like "No Fun" or "I Wanna Be Your Dog" reveal Iggy the Iguana's unmatched gift for self-destructive nihilism - a gift he himself admits was eloquently inspired by another great prince of transgression of that era, the mythic figure of doomed rock incarnate, Jim Morrison, who, during a concert, so captivated Pop that he sent him into a frenzy, to the point of pushing him toward a decision as drastic as it was irreversible, one that would change his life forever: Iggy wanted to emulate his Dionysian hero, and he too would throw himself into the role of the outrageous performer.

The record, however, gets no love from an audience perhaps too busy fighting the Vietnam War with pacifist slogans, an audience naively unaware of what was happening in the city's underbelly, an urban decay that the songs of the era certainly didn't portray, favoring more comforting, less risky themes instead. In short, the Stooges, and Pop in particular, would become the post-summer-of-love icons of a movement celebrating the moral and psychic decay of the human race, casting themselves as the "borderliners" of a Society devoted to consumerism and the extreme cult of well-being.

1970 arrives, and all these themes are brilliantly laid out in "Fun House", the band's second effort, one that would dare to push the dial of musical madness even further, reaching heights unthinkable for the time in the grooves of the aforementioned LP. The first three tracks are nothing more than an appetizer, a timid preview of the "sonic-psychic" crime that would fully materialize in the album's second half. "Dirt", in a sense, foreshadows the reality-bending atmospheres of side B: it's the track that represents the artistic peak of the LP, a distorted, magnetic blues number, with Iggy's voice finally taking center stage as it deserves, ably backed by Ron Asheton's chaotic yet devastatingly effective guitar work - perhaps one of the most underrated guitarists in rock history (he was, after all, the first true forerunner of punk guitar!). "Dirt" ends with a sense of emptiness and anticipation that would erupt savagely into the already-mentioned second half of "Fun House". A sinister, menacing guitar attack marks the start of "1970", the first real assault on the coronary arteries of a listener who, within minutes, will be indelibly "violated" by the incredible, unheard-of blend of rage, persecution, gasps and animal instinct that pervades the whole record, giving it a sense of total disorientation, a kind of sensory stupor, perhaps in feverish anticipation of a "sonic murder" that would go down in the annals as one of the boldest musical statements ever heard. We're already spellbound, pinned to our seats, as we move through the chaotic, thoroughly sinful "primal-scream"-style finale of "1970", in which Iggy finally, definitively earns the ultra-legitimate title of "performer at the edge of reality". We're on the brink of a musical Apocalypse, and Pop's raw, abrasive, flayed screams give birth to a nightmare from which there seems to be no waking up.

It's the triumph of Iggy's (nearly) hardcore voice, brilliantly accompanied by a disjointed, thoroughly deranged sax, played on this occasion by a formidable Steven Mackay, who lends it a sense of infinite emptiness and endless despair. "I Feel Alright" repeats itself as Pop increasingly flaunts his sandpapered vocal cords, as if marking out a fate already sealed, one that cannot be escaped. Decadent, in its own way. Once the "erotic-sadomasochistic cauldron" of the tremendous "1970" is spent, the following track arrives, the title track, its ideal continuation, almost as if it were a body, an entity unto itself, lost in its own aura of eternal unhappiness and urban rage. Here McKay's sax is masterful, magnificently "thickening" the reality-bending atmosphere, a reality no longer real but rather a "non-reality". It's a festival of macabre, ultra-distorted, savage sounds, a grotesque "grand guignol" melting pot that sweeps away every cliché and places at its center the sick, drugged, solitary scream of the Iguana. Guitar, sax, voice and a dry, bone-dry drum sound seem to follow their own separate paths, though in truth everything is miraculously held in balance by an extremely tight thread that remains intact until the record's end. It's a party celebrating the dark side of a self-righteous Society, one of which the Stooges are its infallible, ruthless standard-bearers.

Then comes the finale. Anyone with a heart condition, or unable to conceive of such a maelstrom of madness and self-destruction, please step aside and let the boundless, indescribable rage of these four young men from Detroit pour out. "L.A. Blues" isn't a blues at all, but an unlikely, indigestible jumble of "primal-scream" vocals, ultra-saturated guitars, anarchic drumming and sax teetering between inconceivable shrieks, deliberate dissonance and brief flashes of lucidity, alternating with an Iggy Pop raised to the nth power (imagine what that means, after having already absorbed the previous two tracks...), heedless of the sheer anti-commercial absurdity of such a groove: a celebration of the most primitive, iconoclastic, anarchic, deranged and nihilistic noise imaginable. Now, the end: that insolent, ill-omened hiss, and Iggy Pop's exhausted, rattling voice, announcing the epilogue of a story with no equal in rock's forty-year history.

Many "punk heroes", or self-proclaimed ones, should think ten times before claiming to have invented anything, and, if you have serious doubts, go back, race back to 1970 and try to grasp what this man, Iggy the Iguana, managed to build in an era that was far too repressed and conformist, a very dangerous time for anyone wishing to go beyond what was allowed. You will not come out of this record "alive".

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12/11/2006